Women Accuse Smith Transcripts Claim Suspect Like Animal

July 24, 1991|By LISA OCKER, Staff Writer

Their words were different, but their stories were strikingly similar. A doctor, a medical student and an ex-girlfriend of a cousin of William Kennedy Smith all said they were sexually assaulted by Smith.

In separate statements released on Tuesday by prosecutors in Smith`s pending rape case, the women told how the quiet young man revealed a Jekyll and Hyde aspect to his personality as he turned violent and forced himself on them.

``Ferocious, almost animal-like,`` was the way one woman described Smith in the moments before she said he raped her in May 1988 in Washington, D.C., where they attended Georgetown University.

Another fellow student said Smith grabbed her, threw her over his sofa, pinned her wrists to the floor, lay on top of her and began kissing her neck. The woman, now a doctor, was able to persuade Smith to let her go on that spring night in 1988 by ``trying to appeal to ... the gentleman inside of him,`` she said.

A woman who then was dating Smith`s cousin, Mathew ``Max`` Kennedy, said Smith ``attacked`` her, apologized for doing so when she struggled free, then jumped on her again and apologized again as she fled from his parents` home in New York one night in the summer of 1983.

The women`s statements to prosecutors represented the first time any of them made allegations against Smith to law enforcement officials. None reported the incidents to police because they thought they would not be believed, they said.

Assistant State Attorney Moira Lasch filed notice on Monday that she intends to call the three women as witnesses under the so-called Williams rule. The evidentiary standard provides for testimony concerning a defendant`s past criminal behavior if it is similar enough to the case at hand that it might prove things such as pattern of conduct or motivation.

Smith, 30-year-old nephew to Sen. Edward Kennedy, is charged with sexual battery and battery of a 29-year-old Jupiter woman on March 30 at the Kennedys` Palm Beach estate. His trial is set for Aug. 5.

The woman who says Smith raped her in 1988, now 26 and a medical student at the University of New Jersey, talked to prosecutors after they asked her to do so. Prosecutors had read her allegations in the the National Enquirer tabloid, she said.

She said she subsequently received calls from mutual friends of hers and Smith`s who asked her not to testify against him.

In her statement, taken July 13, she said she talked to the tabloid and again to prosecutors because ``if somebody else reads about this and they heard what happened in Palm Beach, maybe other people will come forward, too.``

The other two women volunteered their statements to prosecutors last week because they wanted to help bolster the pending case, they said. The doctor said she had read that the Jupiter woman said Smith`s last words to her were that no one would believe her, ``and I thought, with my reputation, maybe I could lend a hand.``

The doctor went to Smith`s town house expecting a party there, she said. Instead, Smith suggested the partygoers might be at a pool, and led her there, took off his clothes and jumped in, she said. When he realized she wasn`t coming in, he suggested they go back in the town house, where he tackled her, she said.

She persuaded him to release her by explaining he had misunderstood her intentions.

The woman who had dated Smith`s cousin, Mathew Maxwell Kennedy, said Kennedy initially minimized her story, telling her that Smith had already called him to apologize for ``making a pass`` at Kennedy`s girlfriend.

Afte publicity about the Palm Beach case, Kennedy, son of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, called the woman to apologize for not taking her seriously, she said.

Kennedy also told her he thought his cousin ``really has a problem,`` she said, and that he should get professional help ``for his feelings toward women.``

Kennedy also is listed as a state witness.

The ex-girlfriend of Smith`s cousin, now 27, said she accepted Smith`s invitation to stay the night in the summer of 1983 at his parents` house in New York. ``One moment he was standing in front of me, talking with me, saying goodnight to me, and the next minute he ... had tackled me onto the bed.``

As he lay on top of her, fondling her, the woman fought and cursed and managed to wiggle free, she said. Smith then began apologizing profusely, she said. ``But that was just for a brief moment because he immediately did the same thing again,`` she said. ``He tackled me again, pushed me back onto the bed, and did the identical thing.``

Struggling free again, the woman fled the house, she said. Smith followed, pushing and grabbing her, trying to persuade her to stay and apologizing for making such a bad impression, she said.

The woman who says Smith raped her said Smith had offered to drive her home after she drank too much at a party thrown by Smith`s classmates at Georgetown University medical school. The woman was then a Georgetown graduate student.

The woman, now 26, told prosecutors that Smith was ``somebody that I knew and somebody that I trusted.``

When he offered the ride, the woman said she thought she would be taken to her home but instead he took her to his townhouse in Georgetown, she said. There, he pulled out some marijuana and began smoking it, she said.

He refused to take her home, inviting her to sleep at his home, she said. She said she thought he would sleep on the couch and she would sleep in his bed. But he pursued her, pulled off her clothes and his own, put on a condom and jumped on top of her, she said. The woman was too drunk to fend him off, and the next thing she knew he had raped her, she said.